CHILLICOTHE – It’s not often that a school district can plan to construct not one, but two new buildings while saving taxpayer money at the same time.

That scenario, however, is what continued playing out during 2016 as progress moved forward toward construction of two new grade-banded elementary schools – a pre-K through 2 facility at the corner of Cherry and Mill streets and a grades 3 through 6 building at Arch and Vine streets.

More than half of the funding for the project – about 55 percent – is coming from the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission. The school district’s 45 percent match was achieved by rolling back some of the millage from a 2013 operational levy and successfully asking district voters to approve a bond issue equal to the amount of the rollback.

During 2016, the scope of the project began to take shape. Members of the district’s Executive Design Team – made up of both representatives of the school district and members of the community – worked with SHP Leading Design to come up with the features desired in each of the buildings. As the year progressed, those ideas became exterior renderings, then initial graphic representations of the interiors.

One of the more revolutionary concepts being incorporated into the buildings is that of learning pods for each grade level. The pods will allow each grade level to be contained to its own area of the building with the exception of going to specials like gym or lunch. Within each pod will be the flexibility for classroom walls to be slid back so that joint lessons can be taught by two or three teachers, and pods will also have shared Extended Learning Area spaces where students can work on group projects or several classes can be pulled together for presentations or discussions.

The renderings shared with the public began to make the project seem more concrete, as did a well-attended Oct. 29 groundbreaking ceremony on the site of one of the new buildings. Recent demolition of the former Hopewell and Western buildings also were physical manifestations of forward momentum that will be enhanced when actual construction of the buildings themselves begins in the spring of 2017.

The district is expecting to have students ready to move into the new buildings in the fall of 2018.

- Chirs Balusik, Reporter, Chillicothe Gazette